


Delivery Charge

by The_lazy_eye



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Fluff, I don't know why he even tried, It Prompt Week, M/M, Nurse!Eddie, PizzaBoy!Richie, Richie can't do parkour, Second-Hand Embarrassment, pizza boy AU, public confession
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 21:39:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15827457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_lazy_eye/pseuds/The_lazy_eye
Summary: He knows that falling for a customer is an entirely new level of stupid but if Richie Tozier is anything he’s the king of making bad decisions.





	Delivery Charge

**Author's Note:**

> It Fandom Week, Day Three: August 28th- Party/ Public confession

This has been going on for ages, probably since around the time Richie was first hired. He’s seen all the pornos, he’s read stories, he’s seen the commercials, but nothing prepared him for real life. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This is reality, not some kind of poorly filmed intro for a sleazy, low budget pornography. No, this is life. Well, this is _his_ life. His real, actual reality. Richie Tozier was a pizza delivery boy is falling hard and fast for one of his usual customers.

He’s not even sure how it started. Sometime after his training but before he actually got a handle on things a boy placed an order for a small plain pizza in a quiet, suburban apartment complex. Richie was given the delivery and embarked on his journey without thinking anything of it. Things took a turn for the worst when he got to his location. He walked up the steps, knocked on the door, and promptly dropped his pizza bag. In his frenzy to pick it up he hadn’t noticed the door open and a figure move to stand in the doorway. When he looked up he caught eyes with possibly the cutest boy he had ever seen. Standing before him was five feet five inches of pure, unadulterated beauty. The light from his house illuminated him like the glow of an angel.

Richie stammered his way through an apology and offered to deliver a new pizza free of charge. The other boy simply laughed and handed his money over to Richie. Richie being Richie immediately dropped that, too. The boy laughed again and helped Richie pick up the scattered bills before reassuring him everything was okay. He had tipped Richie extra saying, “Here’s a little something to help a cute boy out on his first day.”

Coincidentally, Richie has delivered pizza to him a number of times since the year he’s been working for the pizza shop. He originally shrugged the embarrassment off thinking he’d never see the boy again, but he’s gradually found himself in that little neighborhood more and more in the recent months. The deliveries started slowly at first. He went two months without seeing him. Then only one month between deliveries. Now, he’s been to that front door roughly five times in the past two months. It’s hard to get to know each other in small ten-minute interactions but they’ve somehow managed to get by. He’s come to learn that the boy’s name is Eddie and that he works at the hospital in their town. Eddie enjoy candy and bad romantic comedy movies. Eddie sometimes has friends at his apartment that whoop and holler when Richie drops off pizza. Eddie’s laugh sounds like music to his ears and his eyes are a chocolate brown that Richie could drown in. Richie had revealed he plays music on the side and Eddie demanded to hear it sometime. Eddie also learned that Richie has a dog and is living with his best friend from college while he figures out how to kick start a career.

Eddie had teased Richie mercilessly about their first encounter but it has become something of an inside joke between them – if it’s even normal to have inside jokes with someone you deliver pizza to. Richie will come up to the door, Eddie will open it, and Richie will pretend to drop the pizza or the money or something else. They’ve developed something of a banter. Eddie teases Richie about the pizza, Richie shameless hits on Eddie, and then they part ways. Richie adores it. He adores getting a delivery and seeing Wayside Apartments on the slip. He knows that falling for a customer is an entirely new level of stupid but if Richie Tozier is anything he’s the king of making bad decisions.

That’s why he is currently in his car driving down Main Street in the middle of the night with a hot pizza in his back seat. He is about to do something monumentally stupid. See, this is no ordinary pizza delivery and that is no ordinary pizza in the back seat. He’s not in his pizza boy uniform and there is no light up sign on top of his car. It’s just him, his pizza, and his run down 1999 Toyota Corolla careening towards a bright building.

Bev helped him make the pizza. They spent the past few hours attempting to make a plain pizza by scratch. The first two attempts failed horribly. The first one had too much water and not enough yeast. The second one sat in a charred pile in their trash can after setting the smoke alarm in their unit off twice.

Third times the charm.

He curses to himself as he pulls into an empty space and hauls himself out of his car. He knows he can turn back now but he’ll never be able to live it down. Bev will hold it over his head until the day he dies. Plus, he’d have to face Eddie knowing he chickened out. Richie Tozier was a lot of things but he was not a chicken.

He quickly pulls the box from his backseat before making his way towards the florescent lighting of the hospital. He had delivered to Eddie earlier in the week and somehow his work schedule made its way into their short conversation. Eddie is working overnight on the pediatric ward tonight, or at least Richie is praying that he is. If he’s not, this entire plan is about to go into shambles.

When he walks in he sees the front desk receptionist borderline asleep at her post. She’s leaning to the side with her head in her hand and her mouth slightly open. Instead of bothering her he takes a sharp right and follows the signs for Eddie’s department. Anxiety bubbles up into his throat like a carbonated drink and he desperately tries to swallow it down before climbing into the elevator and pressing the button for the fourth floor.  

When the elevator dings and the door opens Richie finds a much busier atmosphere than the one he left behind. Two women were talking in hushed but animated voices at the nurse’s station and several other people in scrubs were wandering the halls. No one noticed him at first and he took his chance to slip into a hallway and wander blindly. Eddie was nowhere to be seen and Richie could only pray that this wasn’t a huge mistake.

He passes by several rooms with the doors closed before he hears someone call out in his direction.

“Hey, kid! You can’t be out of bed.”

Richie whips around to see a large man in light blue scrubs starring at him from the other side of the hall. Still not who he’s looking for. A look of confusion passes over the other man’s face before his expression settles into something mixed between realization and annoyance. Richie isn’t sure how he didn’t factor this part in. He was sure to be caught. Strange men don’t just wander pediatric wards in the middle of the night without someone trying to stop them.

“Listen, visiting hours are over. Why don’t you bring that pizza back tomorrow?”

Richie’s grip on the box tightens as he processes the situation. He has two options. He can ask this man where Eddie is and risk being escorted out of the hospital or he can run. Naturally, he chooses the latter option and turns on his heels before breaking out into a soft jog down the hall. He hears the man call after him as he turns the corner and breaks out into a full-on sprint. He rounds another corner before passing the nurse’s station again. This time he manages to attract the attention of everyone near him as be barrels down the hall, checking every room for chestnut brown hair and eyes that could pierce his soul. Several more people tell him to stop but he chooses to ignore them. He can hear footsteps behind him and he knows that someone is seconds away from ruining his plan. He veers to the right and jumps over a gurney, still holding the pizza box tightly in his hands, before hanging a left into a new hall.

He’s not sure how long he runs but the ward isn’t as big as he needs it to be to escape. He can’t find the stairs and waiting for the elevator will be his downfall. He still hasn’t found Eddie but at this point he knows he has to leave. Hell, Eddie might not even be working tonight. It’s better to bail now than to get caught and face the consequences. He ends up at the nurse’s station a third time and decides to launch himself up over the counter before attempting to dart through the small opening in the back.

This, however, is his ultimate mistake. His glasses have slipped down his nose and he hasn’t had any chance to adjust them. This hindrance on his eyesight causes him to misjudge the opening and his hip catches on the corner wall. This sends him careening into a hallway and directly into one of the nurses passing by. Richie feels the pizza box crumble on impact and he feels the nurse’s limbs tangle around him in an attempt to stay standing. Their attempts are useless and the two of them fall to the ground before Richie rolls off and begins begging for forgiveness.

By now, the other nurses have caught up and the man from before hauls Richie up by the back of his shirt. The scene is absolute chaos. Some nurses are helping the person on the ground, Richie is continuing on his rambling apology, and the man is yelling at Richie and threatening to call security. To make matters worse, several children have been woken up and are in the hallway investigating the source of the noise.

“Richie? What the absolute fu – I mean. What are you doing here?”

A silence falls over the floor and, for a second, nothing makes sense. Suddenly, Eddie is rising to his feet in front of Richie and fixing him with a long, curious look.

“You know this guy?” the nurse asks and Eddie simply nods before chucking lightly.

“Yeah, I do,” he says slowly, voice light with amusement. “What are you doing here?”

All eyes are on Richie now. Not that they haven’t been for the past several minutes but now that the adrenaline is leaving his system he feels nervous. This did not go how he planned it. Eddie’s face is beat red and he’s wearing an expression that Richie can’t place. Of course he can’t place it. He hardly knows the guy. Eddie is probably pissed as all hell and will never want to see Richie again. He’s probably mentally going over other pizza shops in the area just so he’ll never have to chance running into him whenever he’s a bit hungry. Richie glances to the box that’s lying discarded on the ground a few feet from them. Eddie’s eyes follow his and, sure enough, there it is: a pizza with the word _date?_ spelled out in brightly colored skittles.

Richie lets out an audible groan and he feels his cheeks and ears heating him. Eddie’s reaction does nothing to ease his embarrassment. He full out a belly laugh, throwing his head back and shaking with the force of it. Everyone else is left to stand awkwardly while Eddie composes himself. Eventually he settles and runs a hand over his face.

“Are you asking me out, pizza boy?”

“Uh, yeah I think so. That was the goal, anyway,” Richie responds weakly. Eddie sends him a warm smile to ease his nerves.

“Why didn’t you just bring that to my house?” he asks, pointing to the ruined pizza. Richie shrugs. He can feel the absurdity of the situation settling in and his shoulders begin to shake. Before either of them knows it they’re both dissolving into another fit of laughter. Richie doubles over and the nurse releases his hold on Richie’s shirt. People begin to disperse, the awkwardness of the situation becoming too much to bear. Nurses shoo kids back into their rooms and others collect their papers from the station and wander off. When the boys calm down, the one who caught Richie asks Eddie if he needs to call security. Eddie waves him off and then it’s just the two of them and whoever stays behind the counter.

“I get off at 7, do you want to grab some breakfast?”

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't mean to write this but I regret nothing. 
> 
> reddie-for-anything.tumblr.com


End file.
